


Inside the Vault

by eryth_sea



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, Out of Character, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-08 16:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11085453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eryth_sea/pseuds/eryth_sea
Summary: When Missy said she never learned the names of those she killed, she wasn't telling the truth.





	Inside the Vault

**Author's Note:**

> I really liked the final scene in The Lie of the Land where Missy starts to think about her past misdeeds. Possible spoilers for the Monks trilogy and Series 9. Some OOC Missy, but that is sort of the point of this one-shot.

Missy had spent some time staring at the platform where she would die for what could possibly be the last time, ignoring the water flowing behind it. She had heard of the dreary place before, as it was where even the hardiest of creatures were executed. Which unfortunately included her. It wasn't the first time she had been killed, but it felt like it would be her last.

At least the weather reflected her current mood: dull and dreary without end. She had felt this way since the Doctor abandoned her at Skaro for the way she had treated Clara, left to the mercy of the Daleks. Knowing from experience that she would come back if they killed her, they simply handed her over to someone who would make sure she stayed dead.

She didn't like it one bit.

Sometimes she would hear news about the Doctor. Of his adventures with Clara across time and space and then losing her. Of how he had banished Rassilon back on Gallifrey without any blood shed. Of how he blissfully spends his days with his wife on Darillium, not knowing, or caring, about her. She would pity him for how vanilla his methods were if she wasn't in such a boring situation herself. During her weakest moments, she would look into the sky through what little window space she had, hoping the Doctor would come and whisk her away in his TARDIS. But she knew that even if he ever made the offer, she would still refuse. There were quite a few days like this, her executioners were thorough to the point of dragging out the process. All they would tell her was that they needed a specific person, though she had a feeling she knew exactly who they were looking for.

 

She was alive, but she wished he had gone through with ending her like he should have done. A thousand years in one room would be enough to drive her insane, and not the fun kind of crazy she enjoyed being. There was even the possibility of her actually going through with her promise of being good, which was a horrifying thought for the Time Lord. 

It was common knowledge that the Doctor was merciful, but less was known of how cruel he could be with that mercy. To fulfil the agreement, the Doctor had sealed her, alive, within the vault. Inside it felt more like a drawing room than a prison, with its many windows and fancy furniture all designed to make her not want to break out; the room itself was minimalist in its design and painted in muted colours to serve as a reminder that it was meant to be a prison. In the centre of the room was a piano, clean as a whistle and tuned to perfection, almost as if he knew this was how she would amuse herself. The Doctor also visited every now and then; these meetings she would both look forward to and dread. They could both reminisce about their childhood back on Gallifrey. Back when times were simple and nostalgia made the good times look better. Back when he didn't run and she never had the drums. 

However, the times they had clashed over the centuries hung over the pair of them, creeping its way in when their conversations travelled down a path neither of them wanted to venture. She noticed that it was best not to talk about their childhood for too long, for the subject of the Time War would inevitably rear its head and kill the conversation. The silence that would ensue was worse than when she was alone. Often asking what happened to previous companions would only earn her a harsh glare hardly hiding the grief behind them. The only exception was with Clara, where his intense gaze would be narrower, eyebrows furrowing as if he was trying to recall something he should know.

 

Being left alone was the worst part of her sentence. There was only so many times she could play _The Entertainer_ before she could feel the fatigue in her hands. This left her alone with her thoughts, which she never enjoyed. When she was in a contemplative mood, she would close the lid of the piano, recline herself on top of it and stare at the ceiling as if she was waiting for it to do something spectacular to cure her tedium.

First, she would think of every reason she hated the man who had left her to this fate. Going over the ways that every plan she had meticulously crafted would be thwarted by him. Even when she was trying to help him he would find a way to take offence to her kind gestures. If only he knew how much time it took to create a Cyberman army, he would have appreciated her efforts more. Then again, she did get some sick satisfaction from corrupting humans into something so unrecognisable and so twisted it would make the Doctor's hearts break. She despised him so much, she had once died just to spite him.

Then she started to remember the time they worked together to defeat the other Time Lords, shortly after she was revived. They were both different back then, coming to the end of their respective regeneration cycles even if they didn't now it at the time. The Doctor was cuter back then, with a younger body and mousy brown hair that seemed to shift with every expression. He was more charismatic but had a quiet fury that would awaken when someone had pushed his buttons, using his reputation to strike fear into his opponent. She was a lot different too, having an equally young male body and an insatiable appetite that wasn't there before. One of the few things she had in common with her past life was that they were both bananas. Her last incarnation had died to thwart Rassilon's plan to win the Time War prematurely, which was equally reckless and crazy enough to work.

It didn't take long for the names of some she had killed to go through her head. Chantho. Lucy. Seb. Osgood. Every name she recalled felt like a punch to the gut, the guilt piling on with each blow. She could feel her body curling into itself as defence from a non-existent assailant. At the time she could justify her kills: 'they were in the way', 'they knew too much', 'they were annoying', and her personal favourite, 'it would make him so mad'. Deep down she knew they didn't deserve to die, even if she garnered joy from seeing the light leave their eyes. It must have been her most recent near death experience that triggered these thoughts, as before she never batted an eye when she had decimated the human race.

Her thoughts wondered back to her captor, wondering if this is how he felt every time he dispatched his enemies. The sleepless nights thinking about the magnitude of destruction he has caused across the universe, trying to remember those who were gone because of him. It was never a feeling anyone could get used to, even with the passage of time. Maybe that was why he hadn't visited her for a while. Wherever he was, he was most likely being his usual do-gooder self as penance for the atrocities he committed in his relative youth.

If being good meant having to live this way forever, Missy would go back to her evil ways in a heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is always welcome. This is my first fic, so I hope that my writing gets better from here


End file.
